Jesse Gossett may only be on the verge of completing his freshman year in college, but he has already involved himself in more activities than most students do in their entire four years.
"I'm into technical theater and I'm doing lights for 'Pillowman,'" Gossett said. "I was also the MC for the Parade of Nations, I'm going to be an RA next year, and I'm really involved in the International Club."
"I also do Tae Kwan Do," he added. "I have a curiosity for everything, and a tendency of overextending myself and dipping my toes in everywhere."
According to Gossett, his curiosity for the unknown developed when he was growing up in a rather atypical setting - on the Swinonish Indian Reservation in Washington State.
"A lot of people think I'm Native American," Gossett explained. "I'm not, but that's the way Native Americans make their money, by renting land. It's cheap land, and so my parents built a house there before I was born."
According to Gossett, the local school was extremely small, with only about 40 students per grade. "About half were Native Americans, but it wasn't any more segregated than your average inner city school," Gossett said.
"A lot of people ask what that was like, growing up on a reservation, and it's almost like living in or next to a third world country - but in a good way, because the third world country has a way of preserving their culture," Gossett said. "It's not anything repressive or negative, but they keep a lot of their traditions - such as wood carving, canoeing, sailing and religion."
Gossett added that he was a frequent participant in the reservation's traditional "pow wows."
"They are very including of the community, and oftentimes, we would go on field trips and eat flat bread and have a pow wow and be culturally immersed," Gossett said.
The freshman even "did international orientation because it was kind of like being international," he said.
Gossett's unusual upbringing was not confined to the activities of the reservation, however. His father is the reservation's shaman - a member of certain tribal societies who is the community's connection to the spirit world. The shaman often practices magic or sorcery for purposes of healing, divination and control over natural events.
"[My father] grew up in Oklahoma and became a minister at a Methodist church," Gossett said. "I'm not sure when he started learning about the shamanic arts, but it's been ever since I was born. He's incorporated shamanic teaching into his counseling, such as psychotherapy and exorcism."
"Shamanism is a set of spiritual tools that are used to either practice religion or reach the spirit world," Gossett said. "You really do find shamans in any ancient society: from the Incas to the Chinese, all societies had them. Oftentimes they use ancient devices - for my father it's Native American drumming - and that allows you to go into the 'trance state' to reach the spirit world.
"A lot of the purpose of that is to reach the ancestors in the spirit world," he said. "Oftentimes, you'll find the shaman will go into a trance for three days, and he's in the spirit world. He'll come out of the trance and say something like, 'There are three mountain ranges to the west,' and you better hope the shaman is right because by the time the tribe gets there, they will be out of food."
"It's something that people completely relied on for guidance," Gossett added. "He is the spiritual leader."
It seems that Gossett's transition to college life in Boston would have been difficult, given that he's come from a life based on old-world traditions.
According to Gossett, however, Tufts was both shocking and familiar. "I think throughout my entire life I've been a little different from other people, just because of how I grew up and how my parents were, and my religious beliefs and opinions on life and politics," he said. "I've always been a floater, so it was fairly easy to transition just because I never really fit in anyways, and it's been a real joy being able to learn about everyone else.
"That culture instilled in me a curiosity for everyone else and everything else," he added. "But everything here has been very different for me, and I like learning about all the different people and cultures here. For example, I'd never even seen a Jewish person before I got here, and that's a whole new aspect for me, too."
